Some people shut down discussion of HB2 by saying it is “discriminatory.” They hope the dreaded “d-word” will strong-arm levelheaded people to move against the bill.

But what’s wrong with being discriminatory? Discrimination simply means you notice a difference between two things and treat one differently than the other because of that difference.

For example, laws that prohibit men from using women’s locker rooms (and vice versa) discriminate. They notice that men are different than women and use that difference as the basis to treat men differently or, in this case, deny them access to certain facilities. If all discrimination were wrong, then you couldn’t have any segregated bathrooms or locker rooms.

Jim Crow laws that prohibited minorities in this country from using white locker rooms and forced them to use their own facilities didn't just discriminate, they unjustly discriminated. They used a morally irrelevant trait like race to justify unequal treatment and segregation. The same would be true for restaurants that deny women service so that male customers could have “man-time.” In this case, the difference between men and women is not morally relevant to the restaurant’s unequal treatment of women or the potential harm of such discrimination.

However, as with segregated locker rooms, discrimination can be morally justified if it has a rational basis. What about the North Carolina bathroom bill? Common sense should (but, unfortunately, often does not) tell people that men and women have morally relevant differences that races or nationalities do not. They are often sexually attracted to one another or, at least, experience feelings of deep discomfort when they are forced to disrobe or engage in excretory functions near one another. Therefore, the common good is best served by segregating men and women in places where intimate bodily functions or disrobing occurs.

Indecent exposure

Now, someone might argue that he has a good reason to use the changing facility of another sex and so such discrimination is unjustified. Consider a meek, 13-year-old boy who is routinely bullied in the male locker room. He may wish to use the girl’s locker room because he does not want to be physically intimated. Let’s say further that he has deep-seated same-sex attraction. He could argue that the girls should not feel uncomfortable around him, since he isn’t sexually attracted to them.

But it should be clear that girls are justified in being uncomfortable in the presence of a nude or seminude post-pubescent boy, and their right to privacy outweighs the boy’s desire to be comfortable. In fact, all states have laws that ban this kind of “indecent exposure” between men and women. This fact also highlights a glaring problem with solutions from critics of HB2 that allow people to use facilities that match their “gender identity” and not their biological anatomy.

Let’s suppose the law is amended so critics get their wish: a person is allowed to use any public facility, including restrooms and locker rooms, on the basis of gender identity and not biological sex. Now, what do we do about section 14-190.9 of the North Carolina penal code? It says, “Any person who shall willfully expose the private parts of his or her person in any public place and in the presence of any other person or persons, except for those places designated for a public purpose where the same sex exposure is incidental to a permitted activity . . . shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor.”

If a man exposes himself to two boys walking home from school, he would be guilty of indecent exposure (and possibly other crimes, since his victims were minors). If he exposes himself in the process of changing in a male locker room, he would not be guilty, since that occurred in a “place designated for a public purpose where the same sex exposure is incidental.” But if he waltzed into a female locker room and changed in front of a group of girls or women, he would be guilty of indecent exposure. How does his guilt change if the man says he identifies as a woman?

Keep in mind that this is not a mere hypothetical example. A few years ago a group of teenage girls came across 45-year-old Colleen Francis exposing “her” male genitals in the sauna of a public locker room. Whether the possessor of male genitals identifies as a man or as a woman, the women in the locker room are still exposed to the sight of male genitals, and that is what justifies indecent exposure laws. How does the fact that the possessor of male genitals may think he’s a woman, or the king of France, or any other distortion of reality, change that reality?

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

As I lay on my back in Hospitalland, a phrase kept coming unbidden into my mind: “the divinization of one’s passivities.” This is a line from one of the great spiritual works of the twentieth century, The Divine Milieu by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In that seminal text, Teilhard famously distinguished between the divinization of one’s activities and the divinization of one’s passivities. The former is a noble spiritual move, consisting in the handing over of one’s achievements and accomplishments to the purposes of God. A convinced Jesuit, Teilhard desired to devote all that he did (and he did a lot) ad majorem Dei gloriam (to the greater glory of God). But this attitude, Teilhard felt, came nowhere near the spiritual power of divinizing one’s passivities. By this he meant the handing over of one’s suffering to God, the surrendering to the Lord of those things that are done to us, those things over which we have no control. We become sick; a loved one dies suddenly; we lose a job; a much-desired position goes to someone else; we are unfairly criticized; we find ourselves, unexpectedly, in the valley of the shadow of death. These experiences lead some people to despair, but the spiritually alert person should see them as a particularly powerful way to come to union with God. A Christian would readily speak here of participating in the cross of Christ. Indeed how strange that the central icon of the Christian faith is not of some great achievement or activity, but rather of something rather horrible being done to a person. The point is that suffering, offered to God, allows the Lord to work his purpose out with unsurpassed power.

In some ways, Teilhard’s distinction is an echo of St. John of the Cross’s distinction between the “active” and “passive” nights of the soul. For the great Spanish master, the dark night has nothing to do with psychological depression, but rather with a pruning away of attachments that keep one from complete union with God. This pruning can take a conscious and intentional form (the active night) or it can be something endured. In a word, we can rid ourselves of attachments—or God can do it for us. The latter, St. John thinks, is far more powerful and cleansing than the former.

I confess to not being well versed in this notion of handing over one's suffering to God but in the shadow of the Cross, it makes so much Christian sense.

Recently, I had two separate ailments, both of them short-lived (thank God), where I was in a decent amount of pain. I made a conscious decision to ask God to take my pain and to do something on behalf of loved ones. I offered up my pain for them. It helped me take something forcing me to look inward and instead deflect it outward. It honestly helped. The pain did not, in the moment, lessen but I took comfort in trusting that God would use this pain for something better.

There is much wisdom in the Church's ways, wisdom that looks like such foolishness from the outside.

Monday, April 07, 2014

Anxiety often centers on us—our ability to control, our insecurity about how others will think of us or whether we will succeed or fail. Anxiety is nothing more than fear. We must remember if we have control or lose control, succeed or fail, become wildly popular or an object of scorn—none of that speaks to who we truly are.

We must never forget we are beloved daughters and sons of the Almighty, and nothing can change that. God does all He can to remind us of that fact often. He does it through family, friends and, if we stop to listen, His gentle whisper.

When St. Francis would return to his hometown, his abusive father would come out and curse him publicly. In these times Francis would bring a friend with him. He told his friend the following:

“When my father hurls curses and abuse at me, I will hear them painfully in one ear, but I ask you to walk on my other side, and whisper God’s favor into my other ear. Say to me, ‘Francis, you are my beloved son. You are a son of heaven and a son of God!’ Just keep repeating it until I can believe it again!”

I am thankful to have friends who whisper God’s favor in my other ear until I can believe it again.

Those words come from my wife, and her unfaltering love and support she gives me every single day. They come from my kids when they hug me, snuggle with me, and say “I love you.” They don’t care about my accomplishments, they just want me to chase them upstairs and wrestle with them before bedtime.

It’s my closest friends who remind me I am a beloved son. Those who have seen me at my sparkling best and miserable worst—and still say with conviction, “I love you, brother.”

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Several years ago, an ex-Catholic writer thought she would spend a year sampling all the different churches she could find, one per week. I haven't read the resulting book, but I do remember hearing her say that Catholics certainly don't smile very much during Mass -- and what a shame that was. I suppose it varies from region to region, but she's right about her observation. In all the Catholic churches I've been to, I've only seen smiles during Mass on a few occasions: during the sign of peace (which often feels like an interruption or intermission in the middle of Mass, rather than a part of it); during a homily, if the priest cracks a joke; when there is a "milestone" sacrament, such as First Communion or matrimony, during the Mass; or if something unexpected happens, like a squirrel wanders in or a kid yells out something cute.

In other words, Catholics do smile during Mass, but not, in general, because of what's actually going on in the liturgy itself. Isn't that kind of odd? I mean, if we're sitting there hearing the Good News and then lining up to be literally fed with the literal food of salvation. If that's not a time to rejoice and be glad, then when is the time?

Well, I said I agreed with the church-hopping author about her observation, but I don't agree that all this non-smiling is a sign of anything bad, or something that needs changing.

A couple of years ago, I was telling my brother about my plans for that year's vegetable garden. "Oh, why don't you just skip it this year?" he asked. I was baffled. Skip my garden? Why?

"Because you worry about it so much!" he explained. "It gives you so much anxiety and trouble." For a minute, I didn't even know what he was talking about. But then I had to admit that he was right. Most of the time, when I talk about my garden, I talk about the grubs, the beetles, the hassle of dealing with all those endless rocks that keep drifting up to the surface. Will there be a late frost tonight? I don't know what's gone wrong with my peas this year. I think I need a more gentle method for transplanting. I think I tied up the tomatoes too tight! Oh, gosh, it's time to thin the seedlings, which always makes me feel like such a monster. That's it, I'm going to try hand-pollinating those pumpkins one more time tonight, and if they don't get with the program, I give up. Stupid pumpkins.

...

But in my garden I am happy. So, so happy. All winter long, I think about my garden, and all through early spring, I suffer while I wait and wait for the last of the snow to melt. I sneak out back just to lean over the soil and sniff deeply when the evening dew is sinking in. I have dorky conversations with worms and grasshoppers. I know exactly how many leaves are on each pepper plant, and rejoice over each new one. When I see my little girls wandering into the yard, still in their nightgowns, and finding themselves a snack of string beans, I think I'm going to die of satisfaction. But no, I am not necessarily smiling -- especially when I'm actually working in the garden, digging, weeding, breaking up the soil, looking for something ready to pick.

At the moment, we might be lucky to get even three weeks warning. The United States and the rest of
the world simply do not have the ability to detect many "small" meteors like the one that exploded over Russia, which has been estimated at roughly 55 feet long. Donald Yeomans, Manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office and the author of "Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us," told CBSNews.com that there are a lot of these small meteors in orbit, and little early warning system in place to detect them.

...

If such an object is discovered to be approaching Earth, the leading contender to address the problem would be to crash a spacecraft into it in order to slow it down and alter its course. "If you find it early enough, and you smack it early enough, you've got enough time," said Yeomans. The technology already exists to track and hit a space object: In 2005, NASA deliberately struck the Tempel 1 comet and photographed the impact. Still, for a large object, you'd need billions of dollars and, Yeomans estimates, at least a 10-year head start.

"The technology is there, the question is do we have enough time to plan, build, launch and intercept these objects prior to an impact," he said. The good news is that, in the case of a large object approaching Earth, we would be expected to have decades of advanced warning.

Bolden's response to pray was likely meant as a joke or perhaps, more cynically, as a means to seek more funding for the agency he leads, but I find it revealing nevertheless.

I've been in situations, particularly recently, where my suggestion to seek prayer, especially from a priest, was responded to by a word of caution that doing so might evoke fear because it could be seen to be a last resort before something terrible happens and no one wanted to communicate that the situation was that serious.

Think on that a minute.

We've reached a point culturally where a call to a priest for prayer is seen to be something that ought to be done only as a last resort and, in essence, avoided because no one wants to invoke fear.

It highlights for me how... well... weird I guess... I've become.

I go to a priest for prayer because I believe I need the help. I go because I need to deal with the fear I already have. I go because I've come to know and trust that it helps.

I go because I have a need and going meets that need.

We need to figure out, and I don't sadly have an answer, how to convey that going to priests for prayer isn't just for the dying.

I get yelled at when I say this but the worst-case scenario — and I think it’s inevitable — will be a schism and the creation of an American Catholic Church, one that works very closely with the government to “do the right thing” and reaps its worldly rewards, both material and elitist. It will claim apostolic succession as I have no doubt at all that some bishop in the US will be willing to act as titular head, and it will likely — with the help of the government (via fines, settlements, levies) — quickly lay claim to (or be awarded) Roman Catholic properties.

. . .their resentment builds; they mark every sin within the church, all of its human faults and deep failings, and slowly they convince themselves that their ardent desiring is not objectionable, but the sin-riddled church clearly is. And so they break away. With astonishing speed, a new church is formed in authority, trained in tolerance, unified in purpose and installed within sacred structures confiscated by law, while the disgraced and rigid old church and her clergy are hounded underground.

. . .consider that such a scenario has already taken place in history — right down to the confiscation of properties and the hiding of clergy — and is in fact considered . . .to be one of King Henry VIII’s great “achievements.” . . . All of this speaks to our own era of material abundance, instant gratification and what our good Pope Benedict XVI calls “the dictatorship of relativism,” wherein we create our truths and then drown them in a syrup of sentiment disguised as justice: I like her and she wants to be a priest, so she should be. Divorce doesn’t matter. They’re so nice, why shouldn’t they marry? It’s not fair; the Church is cruel! [As with Henry]…Personal autonomy seeks greater freedom and worldly wisdom encourages self-actualization above all.

The American Catholic Church will quickly become mainstream because it will be seen as victorious over that stuffy old Roman church, and people want to be on the side with the “winner.”

...

I read something I really liked this week, by a writer named Margaret Rose Realy, who is a master gardener; she has a wonderful way of taking what she’s learned amid the turned earth and seeds and applying it well. In line with our stormy times, Margaret writes:

All storms end and after the big ones there is usually the fall-out and debris of broken branches littering the street and lawns. The weakest limbs, those that have declined from the lack of nourishment, have snapped off during the turbulent downpour. It is usually those branches that had grown farthest away from the trunk that have fallen away.

Energy was not drawn up from the root; the branch no longer has life within it. It is no longer able to withstand the storms. A pretty clear analogy of how I should live: Drawing life from His strong roots, developing a living faith so I won’t break apart in the turbulent storms that come.

A good analogy, too of how things will fallout within our church and our country. And, too, how the church will remain who and what it is. As she is tossed, she will draw energy from her root. And when all of the movers and shakers have had their way and perished, she will remain. And she will still be the most radically counter-cultural entity the world has ever known.

It's time, past time really, to become rooted. Storms are a'coming.

Do yourself a favor and take the time to assess how far from the trunk you may've fallen.

I then came across an interesting article via Art of Manliness where a dude manages to pack on and into a shotgun every conceivable piece of survival gear one would need. Crazy. Really can’t excerpt it and do it any justice, ya’ need to just go and read it.

Note: For those that would rather stand on your rooftop and wait for the government to come help you, don’t bother proceeding, nothing to see, move along.

Friday, June 03, 2011

It's pretty interesting to see the following article is actually up on Salon:

Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong

Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for three reasons: The imminent depletion of fossil fuels, national security and the danger of global warming.

What if the conventional wisdom about the energy future of America and the world has been completely wrong?

As everyone who follows news about energy knows by now, in the last decade the technique of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," long used in the oil industry, has evolved to permit energy companies to access reserves of previously-unrecoverable “shale gas” or unconventional natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, these advances mean there is at least six times as much recoverable natural gas today as there was a decade ago.

Natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal, can be used in both electricity generation and as a fuel for automobiles.

The implications for energy security are startling. Natural gas may be only the beginning. Fracking also permits the extraction of previously-unrecoverable “tight oil,” thereby postponing the day when the world runs out of petroleum. There is enough coal to produce energy for centuries. And governments, universities and corporations in the U.S., Canada, Japan and other countries are studying ways to obtain energy from gas hydrates, which mix methane with ice in high-density formations under the seafloor. The potential energy in gas hydrates may equal that of all other fossils, including other forms of natural gas, combined.

If gas hydrates as well as shale gas, tight oil, oil sands and other unconventional sources can be tapped at reasonable cost, then the global energy picture looks radically different than it did only a few years ago. Suddenly it appears that there may be enough accessible hydrocarbons to power industrial civilization for centuries, if not millennia, to come.

So much for the specter of depletion, as a reason to adopt renewable energy technologies like solar power and wind power. Whatever may be the case with Peak Oil in particular, the date of Peak Fossil Fuels has been pushed indefinitely into the future.

.....

Two arguments for switching to renewable energy -- the depletion of fossil fuels and national security -- are no longer plausible. What about the claim that a rapid transition to wind and solar energy is necessary, to avert catastrophic global warming?

The scenarios with the most catastrophic outcomes of global warming are low probability outcomes -- a fact that explains why the world’s governments in practice treat reducing CO2 emissions as a low priority, despite paying lip service to it.....

The truth is finally reaching the progressive realm? The link to the article has the documentation.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

President Obama, facing voter anger over high gasoline prices and complaints from Republicans and business leaders that his policies are restricting the development of domestic energy resources, announced on Saturday that he was taking several steps to speed oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters.

It was at least a partial concession to his critics, who say he has shackled domestic energy development at a time when consumers are paying near-record prices at the gas pump. The Republican-led House passed three bills in the last 10 days that would significantly expand and accelerate oil development in the United States, saying the administration was driving up gas prices and preventing job creation with anti-drilling policies.

...

In his weekly radio and Internet address, the president said the administration would begin to hold annual auctions for oil and gas leases in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, a 23-million-acre tract on the North Slope. The move comes after years of demands for the auctions by industry executives and Alaska’s two senators, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Mark Begich, a Democrat.

The administration will also accelerate a review of the environmental impact of possible drilling off the southern and central Atlantic coasts and will consider making some areas available for exploration. The move signals a change from current policy, which puts the entire Atlantic seaboard off limits to drilling until at least 2018.

The president also said he would extend leases already granted for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean off Alaska that had been frozen after last year’s BP spill. The extension will allow companies time to meet new safety and environmental standards without having to worry about their leases expiring.

The government will also provide incentives for oil companies to more quickly exploit leases they already hold. Tens of millions of acres onshore and offshore are under lease but have not been developed.

...

Responding to the shift by the administration, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the House speaker, John A. Boehner, said, “The president just conceded what his party on Capitol Hill still denies: more American energy production will lower costs and create jobs. This reversal is striking, since his administration has consistently blocked American-made energy.”

Hope and change America can believe in.

Here's looking to more Republican bills in Congress that will continue to apply pressure to arguably the most radically anti-jobs administration in history.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Given the state of the economy and those in charge who seem to be oblivious to the destruction they're wreaking economically, I could see the missus and I living in one of these Container Guest Houses upon retirement (or sooner):

A bonus is that I'd be making Al Gore happy:

This project originated from Poteet Architects’s client’s wish to experiment with shipping containers. She lives in a small warehouse on a former industrial site just south of downtown. The finished project serves as a guesthouse and is fitted with a shower/WC and a custom stainless sink. The large steel and glass lift/slide and end window wall open the interior to the surrounding landscape. The remainder of the interior is used as a garden shed.

...

The emphasis was on sustainable strategies– first, the recycling of a “one-way” container for a new and permanent use. The planted roof is held off the container top, providing shade and air-flow to reduce heat gain. The interior is insulated with spray foam then lined with bamboo plywood, equally appropriate for the floor as the walls. The grey water from the sink and shower is captured for roof irrigation. The WC is a composting toilet. The rear of the container is screened by wire mesh panels which will eventually be covered in evergreen vines.

Other innovative material choices informed the design: the container “floats” on a foundation of recycled telephone poles. The deck is made up of HVAC equipment pads (made of recycled soda bottles) set in a steel frame. The exterior light fixtures are blades from a tractor disc plow—a common sight in south Texas.